Today’s city managers are tasked with budgeting around an infrastructure that has limited capacity for growth, making it a challenge to address the changing needs of the community. Effectively implementing even simple changes requires the documentation, tracking, and measurement of work performance against operational standards to determine the information needed to manage a well-organized government. To that end, city managers and council members need visibility into factors such as labor, materials, and contracted work, that affect cost and performance. This data can then be used to determine and allocate budget money for improvements. City Government Software is a valuable tool for effective municipal management and development.
How confident are you when your annual budget meeting begins? Do you have the information to convince council members of the improvements that need to be made? How will you champion your plans for development? You may only have one shot at presenting your case – it could be another year before you can bring it up again.
City Government Software Will Automate and Track the Appropriate Information and Transform the way you do Business.
In the same way, a car dashboard indicates the need for gas and maintenance, so does the government software dashboard. We can’t always remember every time our car needs gas or an oil change. We rely on the familiar signals from our vehicle. Public Works related assets require service and adjustments as well. This is a challenge because of the many moving parts. Some of these include budget planning, maintenance, service requests, work orders, asset conditions and utilization, and staff productivity. You can’t do one without the other. And communicating that to the council and budget committees is key to getting changes approved.
It’s important to plan and schedule work orders and service requests appropriately. There are many metrics that if tracking can lead to better work distribution, reduced overtime, decreased recurrences, and fewer breakdowns. Likewise, as you analyze average time to completion and backlog growth you are better able to make necessary changes.
City Government Software Will Help City Managers:
Oversee Service Requests:
- Easily see what work was done, when it was done, how well it was done, and how long it took.
- Automatically route requests by category to the appropriate department and citizens receive status updates via email.
- Learn where to make improvements with deeper insight into services requested.
- Keep requests from through the cracks.
- Improve ongoing relationships and interactions with citizens.
- Understand how requests are managed by department, type, or status during a specified time.
- Enter, assign, and update service requests in the office or out in-the-field.
- Track the resolution of citizen requests via email, web form, or call in one database.
- Maintain documentation and history of all work associated with the problem.
- Send automatic reminders when service request completion is overdue.
- Easily select frequent issues from a populated list (i.e. pothole, illegal dumping, street signs) and then use the information to track the frequency, status, and resolution procedures.
- Generate status reports of ongoing and outstanding problems for sharing
Manage and Track Work Orders:
- Geotag work orders with specific, pinpointed location information.
- Expedite work because the equipment and materials needed are listed on preventative maintenance work orders.
- Manage costs by allowing workers to log labor hours, parts used, and task completion status, timestamped from a mobile device.
- Generate reports and charts by work order status, project, employee, or department.
- Identify trouble spots and repetitive work orders, and make modifications needed.
- Create convincing reasons to repair or replace assets by tracking associated work orders.
- Minimize community disruptions when you can foresee and plan for issues (roads, forced outages, traffic).
- Produce many custom reports for the Council without time-consuming excel spreadsheet formulas.
Results:
City Government Software helps track spending, maintain accurate records, and provide informative reports for council members, city managers, and constituents. Furthermore, you can confidently address upcoming budget spending and streamline operations across municipal departments. And besides, you can argue a difference of opinion, but it’s hard to dispute hard facts and evidence. So, take that to the budget meeting!
Follow along in the upcoming weeks as I explain more benefits of government software.
